So,
I didn’t really need a reason to dislike Boris even more but, some while back, I
got one in the post. I’d been staying in London with my son and, on the day in
question, I drove home to Aberdeen and was well pleased with myself for taking
all the correct turns, following the signs and weaving my way through Battersea
and such places to get to the M4 and relative safety. I have a friend as well
as a daughter who drive about London
Anyway,
it was a bright, sunny day and I was soon clear of the mayhem and on my way
north listening to an R J Ellory novel. When I eventually got home, I’d driven
a total of 1500 miles on the trip and only had to answer a few million emails
before I could get back to normal. Then came the letter. It seems that some of
those 1500 miles had been inside the congestion zone. The letter included two
grainy pictures of my car to prove it and demanded sixty pounds, adding that,
if ‘they’ didn’t get it within a couple of weeks, it would be upped to one
hundred and eighty. Now, before you say ‘Serve you right. Cars are a blot on
civilization and shouldn’t have free access wherever they like’, I agree with
you. The experience of being a pedestrian in central London Trafalgar Square
No,
there’s no moral to the story – just the usual vengeful, woe-is-me simmering
and perhaps a mental note to make sure one of the corpses in my next novel is
fat and has untidy blonde hair.
3 comments:
Bill, I feel for you. Driving in an unfamiliar place can be a pain and a half. A couple of times, I've found myself briefly going the wrong way on a one-way street, but like you, I was able to realize my mistake and get out of it quickly.
I can certainly sympathize, Bill. It sounds like driving in Los Angeles or Washington D.C. with all its streets running off the center circles. Following our last trip to Texas, we received a bill for $38 for driving on a Colorado toll road. We were gone long enough that the time limit had expired for payment, so the fee had doubled.
Yes Beth and Jean, we've all been there and done it, probably several times. Your remarks, though, reminded me of last year when my US publisher (and good friend) was here on a visit. She'd hired a car and we did a lot of sightseeing. She's an excellent driver and coped very well with being on the wrong side of the road, except for one time, at a roundabout. We were talking so much that she forgot, briefly, that traffic on the roundabout had right of way and would be coming from her right, so she drove straight across. Cue blaring horn and an irate Scot in a 4 x 4. But, ever the diplomat, I simply wound down my window and called 'It's OK. She's American'.
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